The Virginia Giant!!!

Here is The Virginia Giant!!! from Gold Key's 1978 issue of UFO & Outer Space, #16.

Click this link to go to a web page discussing the reported, unresolved mystery.

UFO and Outer Space 16

Adding art and arranging them in Blogger is just a frustrating process. It has become like one of those tile puzzles where you slide tiles around to try and form a picture.

Well anyway, I finally have a little break from work and I thought I would add a few pages from Gold Key's UFO & Outer Space.

Boris Karloff Tales of Mysters, #57

Comic books are primarily a visual medium. The writing is very, very important and when the words and pictures work well together, you have something special; but it's those pictures that move the stories along. This is from Golden Key, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery #57, from October 1974. It has a bit of an odd concept for a comic book. You really never see the monster. The strongest aspect of a comic book is not used. It is an interesting experiment; but I don't think it is all that successful.

An irritant in this story for me is that Fred, the man the monster seems to be harassing, talks to himself. An advantage that the comics medium has over movies, or television, or theater, is the use of thought balloons. You can read what someone is thinking as well as see their actions. In the panel to the right, he may be thinking something like that; but what he might say would be more like, "What the… who's there?"

Space Mouse: Walter Lantz

Walter Lantz's Space Mouse had no relationship to the Space Mouse published by Avon Publication in the early 1950's. It seems that the Walter Lantz Studio didn't even have much, if anything, to do with the creation of this second Space Mouse character. Here and here are accounts of what happened. If you want to see the pilot, and only, Space Mouse animated cartoon, you can get hold of the Woody Woodpecker and Friends Classic Cartoon Collection Vol. 2, in the bonus section on the DVD set.

This is a story from Golden Key Comics' 1962 Woody Woodpecker #74.





©1962 Walter Lantz Productions, Inc.

The Little Monsters

Golden Key comics were famous for producing stories with characters licensed from other companies, like Donald Duck from Disney or the Flintstones from Hanna-Barbera. One of Golden Key's original creations was The Little Monsters. 'Orrible Orvie and Awful Annie, along with their mother, Demonica, and father, Mildew, first appeared in 1964. The books ran from issue #1 in November 1964 until issue #44 in 1978; but their first appearance was in The Three Stooges # 17, dated May 1964. That puts this monster family as beginning before the Addams Family or the Munsters TV shows.

The humor in the comics is pretty typical funny monster stuff ; but I still love it. The family does everything a normal family would, just with an odd twist. I especially enjoy that they are monsters - not just a creepy, kooky family. Here are a few scans I found to some of the original cover art for the books. Enjoy!